I have failed this month. 

Completely and utterly failed at the challenge of capturing a family photo, just once, in a whole month.

Out of the 3500 odd photos I have taken for work and pleasure not one has featured the four of us. 

There was no moment in March where all four of us were in front of a camera. It just didn't feel right this month, forcing us all to rush a "Me and Mine" photo. Picking a picture perfect spot, setting up the tripod, cajoling the boys and my husband to pose for a snap. Ironic after last month's team effort!

And then I realised maybe it was fate. Because in the last month we have been helping another family with a special project, very close to our hearts. And it's them that need the spotlight this time, not us.

If you are a regular reader, you will know that in August last year my cousin's little boy was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. He was 4. I have mentioned Skye a few times on this blog and as you read this, Sammy and I are on the way to spend a day in Oxford with him and his family, celebrating my cousin's birthday. 

They will be allowed home from hospital for just a few precious hours.

This has been the pattern all week, after a 5 week stint in isolation for high dose chemotherapy. Sally and I keep in touch by email, and often around midnight when she finally has a moment of quiet. Caring for Skye is a 24 hour job and how she is coping with just a few hours sleep a night astounds me.

The happy family photo of them lying on a beach was taken almost exactly this time last year when they were lucky enough to enjoy a 3 month period of travelling across the world.

They are a happy family going through horrendous pain. Every moment is precious and tomorrow, Skye will undergo a scan to determine whether the high dose treatment has been successful. 

In amongst the severe anxiety, round the clock care and juggling their 2 year old youngest son Jesse, they have focussed on something positive. They have set up Blue Skye Thinking, to raise awareness and funds for research into treatment for childhood brain cancers.

There is so much we take for granted. That our children will start school, get married have babies. Live a happily ever after life we show them in fairytales and Disney films. 

Skye has shown and continues to show a fighting spirit and strength of 10 men. There is no doubt in his mind he will get better and this is one of the millions of reasons we all love him so much.

If you have a minute have a read about Skye's story and their blog features the painful, but incredibly eloquent letters by email we have all been receiving as family and friends.

If you use Twitter please can you take a second to follow them @BlueSkyeThink. Consider it your good deed of the day!

Now go and have a peek at a lovely family over on Chloe's blog. Two ridiculously gorgeous brothers to get broody over! 

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.dearbeautifulboy.com/2014/03/me-and-mine-march.html" title="dear beautiful" target="_blank"><img src="http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/looby_boo/meampmine-button_zpscc9f6437.jpg" alt="dear beautiful" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

There is nothing I love doing more than making lists, and wish lists are even better.

I adore ripping pages out of magazines, squirrelling them away in a folder or the back of my notebook and creating fantasy boards on Pinterest. But there is something better. My biggest frustration is often that when you spot something you love there is no link through to be able to buy it, meaning I waste hours and hours trying to source this illusive product I have fallen in love with.

All hail the wonder that is the new eBay collections feature! 

A way to collate all your wish list items and store them for a rainy day! Inspiration that you can actually source - hooray!

I have a habitual routine of letting my imagination run wild with interior design and creating mood boards of inspiration for our dream home... when we ever find it! House hunt is a bad word in this house at the moment. Will we ever agree?!

For our home I flit between styles and colour palettes, themes and influences, but can see them at a glance by curating all my favourite items in one place using collections.

I have always worshipped the girly pinks and pastel shades, my wedding was an explosion of baby pink and subtle greenery and I wish I could hang these in every room regardless of whether there was a birthday or celebration!

It must be the influence of the testosterone in this house because I am drawn to the richness of navy blue and would love a room in our new house bang on trend in 2014 with royal blues. Even just these simple door knobs would bring a touch of elegant navy into a room.

I wish I had the skills to make my own curtains and cushions but instead I know my wish list of fabrics are really for photo backdrops! I mean how wonderful would it be to have a fabric store which you could line with all these linens ready for mini photo shoots?!

But I always come back to my fail safe go to style. A little romantic, a little whimsical, bringing nature into our home. Bell jars padded with moss and little bud vases, shades of green and a mis match of furniture styles and indulgent coffee table books.

How would you describe your style in your house? 

And tell me which of my wish list items would you like too?! Would you go bold and bright like my yellow collection or would you play it safer with striking whites?

You can have a nose at all my collections here! You can find and follow people too! So have a browse through the trending collections and see what inspiration grabs you. 

psst. This is a sponsored post.

It's hard to describe the feeling when you suddenly see your phone light up with a stream of Twitter notifications. It's like Christmas morning for a blogger! Because you know it must mean something good.

And in blog land, being a Finalist in the MAD Blog Awards is like being nominated for an Oscar. Over 200,000 nominations were submitted this year. That's the same number of glasses of milk a single cow will produce in its lifetime, as many pieces as it took to make this Lego creation and as many grey wolves as there are on the planet.

Ok so it may have been trickier than I thought to find 200,000 facts but you get my point! And the fact that you can only vote once means that more people than my supportive family and friends read this blog!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

It is an honour to be listed alongside the calibre of bloggers in the photography category. Katie has the ability to capture a thousand moments in a single shot of her daughters eyes and promotes appreciating the ordinary moments with her Sunday link up, Annie has been on a photographic journey of discovery this year in amongst her other incredible travels for charity as well as offering support with her Better Photos Project, Charly has a beautiful eye for composition and capturing the detail and I regularly join in her What's the Story link up and Helen has got food blogging down to a fine art with her nostalgic story telling and creative imagery.

And then there's me. And I feel like we all bring something different to the MADs this year.

My blogging ethos has always been to share the extraordinary in the ordinary. I choose to see life in a positive and creative way and I thought it might be nice to give you a glimpse into my day.

We can all chose what we focus on and I focus on the things that make me happy, because I am a much nicer person to be around. This is what I try to see.

I try not to see that the boys have turned the chair around and nag too much that they are too close to the TV screen, I try to see that their tiny legs, snuggled together, don't reach the ground yet. I try not to see that we are running late (as usual) to preschool, instead I take an extra 5 seconds to appreciate the magnolia that lives on the corner of our lane.

I could focus on my knotty, drip dried hair that has never looked as nice as the first day it was styled, but it's nicer to focus on the 10 seconds of bliss in Ollie's face letting him climb over onto my lap and pretend to drive the car. Yes, you could see a fishing equipment section of a large home store, but I see party supplies!

Food shopping is a necessary evil. But instead, as I close the boot, I choose to admire my new flip flops (ignoring the toes that need repainting) and take a minute to think how lucky we are to have such a sunny and warm Spring day in March. And for me blogging = mess. Almost every post ends up covering the house in clutter (Clutter by Lucy would be more appropriate) but then I snap a little pocket of detail which makes me smile.

My eye just scoots over the mountain of recycling stuffed in the centre of the sink and heads straight for the notes left on the fridge by a friend. I know at some point I need to sit down and file away all the paper work on the coffee table and move the collection of coats that adorn the metal stairs instead of the coat rack, but it's much more fun to take photos of flowers.

Of course I am never ready to dash off on the school run and always leave an explosion of props and papers behind me but who cares when you get this at 3.10pm. And yes there seems to be never enough time in the day to finish all the work on my to do list, but when work is this pretty it spurs me on!

What does it matter if instead of making gourmet recipes we cheat and buy ready made mash when we are shattered. There will be time one day to sit down and pour through all the inspiration that sits neatly on the kitchen shelves. And who doesn't have a pile of washing at the bottom of the stairs next to a helium canister?! But what does it matter as long as the school uniform is clean when you creep upstairs and peek at matching boys in matching beds.

Because I prefer to focus on the little things that make me happy. And those are the bits I love to share through photography. The extraordinary ordinary.

Photos let you capture a moment and record it forever. It's not about what camera you use, whether you are an expert on Photoshop or whether you know the technical details like a pro, it's about pointing a lens and capturing what you see. And then telling that story. It's not necessarily about a "perfect" picture, it's what's perfect to you.

Being a MADs Finalist and award winner is an incredible achievement and I believe it gives you the opportunity to inspire others, help and advise your fellow bloggers and readers and, above all, encourage as many people as possible to share your passion for photography.

These are the best days of our lives and I want to be a very old lady one day, surrounded by crinkly photo albums, pouring over memory after memory, that I recorded. On a phone, on a tablet, on a disposable camera at a wedding, on an instant Polaroid and on the best investment I've ever made.

I didn't think anything could top how I felt last year. It has made me challenge myself technically, led to work opportunities I'd never have dreamed of and inspired me to (hopefully) write more engaging and quality content for you to read. 

It is a pleasure taking photographs for this blog. Setting up mini photo shoots, leaving a trail of glitter confetti out to the back porch to grab the last snippet of natural light and is the perfect justification for filling my home with props!

Social media is so visual, sites like Pinterest have led to a new waves of photography talent being more easily shared with a worldwide audience and even Twitter have just announced a new photo policy!

Blog photography is about capturing the essence of your blog in imagery. Mine is like a tidal wave of me! I have tried being a ripple and it just doesn't work. So there it is, probably the longest post anyone has written as a Finalist. I am very grateful if you read all the way to this!

Here I am, loud and proud! If you think that I deserve to win this year's Best Photography award you can vote here. And if you'd rather vote for someone else then I wouldn't blame you!

Good luck everyone and here's to a group selfie on awards night!

PS. don't forget you can keep up with a daily dose of happy by following me on Instagram :)